The being of the past

in the present
Memory and information
 Vasil Penchev
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences:
Institute for the Study of Societies and Knowledge:
Dept. of Logical Systems and Models
vasildinev@gmail.com

o International Conference
SPACE AND TIME: An Interdisciplinary Approach
29-30 September 2017
Lithuania, Vilnius University, Faculty of Philosophy, Room 201
Introduction
 The arrow of time
The time is irreversible
o What is past and thus transformed into a part of the past
cannot be reversely transformed into a real and interacting
part of the present as all other parts of the present
Anyway the past can be present in the present as memory
o However, it as memory cannot influence immediately to the
present, but only by the meditation of an actor such as
a human being
 The present versus the past
The present is qualitatively different from the past
o Many essential properties of the present and the past are
opposite to each other, e.g.:
The past is unchangeable, the present is changeable
o The past needs some carrier in the present for it to be
conserved as information
The present does not exist in any way in the past, being an
undetermined future according to it
 The different qualities of the past
and of the present
Thus, the transition from the past to the present should be
a leap from one quality to another quality
o Both past and present can be unified by the shared quality
to be time
So, the concept of time assists that fundamental difference
in quality between the past and the present to be neglected
and therefore, to remain hidden, ununderstood
o For example, the physical quality of time in classical
mechanics reveals the qualitative difference between
the past and the present analogically
 Transforming the quality of the past
Furthermore, the former quality can be transformed into the
latter, but not vice versa:
o The quality of the past should be able to be transformable in
the quality of the present
However, the quality of the present should not be able to be
transformed into the past reversely
o A certain cause for that impossibility should be able to be
pointed out and eventually explained in turn
 The problem
Then, what is the form by which the past is represented in
the present as far as the proper quality of the past cannot be
conserved literally in the present?
o Indeed, the past is necessary to be in the present in
a certain, new form qualitatively
different from the quality of the present properly and even
disjunctively separable from it
Those two different qualities closely linked to each other,
though always disjunctively separable, can be visualized by
information and its carrier: by their corresponding qualities
 Memory
On the other hand, any human being has the past in the
present as memory
o Then, that sense of memory is to be information, which is
carried e.g. by a human being as its carrier
The usual prejudice is: memory can be linked only to very
complex creatures such as human beings, mammals, and
maybe some other animals
o Nevertheless the term memory is spread in technics
processing information such as computers, but maybe in
a more or less different meaning
 Memory versus action
One differs qualitatively the memory of the past
from the action of the present
o Nonetheless, both action and memory share an actor such
as a human being only able to transform memory into action
Whether in fact?
o Is an actor such as a human being only able to transform
memory into action?
If memory is interpreted as the information of the past,
would not the link of information and action be more
fundamental and thus direct?
 The necessary actor
between memory and action
It seems: the transformation of memory into action is
possible only by the meditation of an actor such as a human
being, but not immediately
o Information is not able to be transformed into action
immediately
This seems to be a very, very well confirmed postulate of all
human experience rather than only of science
o Anyway, which are the boundaries of that impossibility?
Obviously the same as those of all experience: those of the
present
 Time in physics
All physical theories includes time as a fundamental physical
quantity
o However, they as well as a considerable part of science rely only
on experience or on its special form of scientific experiments in
particular
What is not empirically testable is too suspicious for physics
though not absolutely unacceptable
o Well, if the boundaries of any experience is the present, the
concept of time seems to transcend them
Then, what about the physical quantity of time?
 Reversible time
versus irreversible time
However, different physical theories interpret the quantity of
time in two, absolutely incompatible ways:
o Either as reversible (e.g. classical mechanics, special and
general relativity),
Or as irreversible (e.g. thermodynamics)
o Any conflict or contradiction does not appear if or as far as
they are disjunctively separated from each other:
One might say that different homonyms of the concept of
time are utilized and coined by each of those two groups
 The change of the viewpoint
The transition from the former to the latter interpretation is
due to the viewpoint change from an element (such as an
atom or molecule obeying the reversible concept of time) to
the huge system of many, many elements sharing a state
distribution of the system as a whole (obeying the
irreversible concept of time)
o So, the concept of reversible time corresponds to the single
quality of separate elements
On the contrary, the fundamentally different qualities of
elements or of a whole need the irreversible time of
thermodynamics
 Quantum mechanics crucified
between reversible and irreversible time
Quantum mechanics was forced to unify consistently both
mechanic and thermodynamic approach to time
o Thus, both incompatible (as reversible as irreversible)
concepts of physical time had to share a common theory
The fundamental Planck constant being thermodynamic in
essence, but involved in mechanics needs that reconciliation
o So, quantum mechanics had to resolve that contradiction in
a consistent way furthermore confirmed experimentally
perfectly convincingly
 How to reconcile
the contradictory approaches to time
Thus, physics in turn approaches the problem how the past
should be in the present in such a way to reconcile the
reversibility and irreversibility of time as a physical quantity
o Though it is not the original wording of the solution, it can
be represented so in contemporary terms:
The concept of information, referring to how the past is
available in the present, should be generalized to quantum
information referable in turn as to information and as to its
carrier in the present
 Husserls phenomenological time
One can add Husserls conception of the past in the present
as retention (Retention) vs. future in the present as
anticipation (Protention)
o Husserls philosophical phenomenology is absolutely
independent of, and different from quantum mechanics
Nonetheless, it had come to conclusion about the nature of
time similar to those of the contemporary quantum
mechanics
o This makes that conclusion more convincing
Theses
 Information in time
(1) The present has the past only as information (memory)
o The concept of information is able to conserve the
fundamental difference between the quality of the past
according to the framework of the present, in which it exists
Information in a narrow sense has always a certain carrier
in the present
o However, information is generalizable as quantum
information thus including its carrier as a form of
information, too
 Information and action
(2) Information is transformed into action in the present
o So, information generalized to quantum information
is as if divided into two parts in the present:
bodies and their actions
This distinction corresponds to the usual distinction in
classical physics between bodies and fields
o However, quantum mechanics and the Standard model
erase that distinction for both bodies and fields can be
considered as elementary particles
In fact, quantum information means the same unification
 The Planck constant
(3) The physical quantity of (quantum) information is
transformed directly and explicitly into the physical quantity
of action by the Planck constant
o Thus, the Planck constant involving thermodynamics in
mechanics unifies entropy referring to the information of a
whole and action, which that whole as a single element is
able to cause to other elements
Quantum mechanics can be called thermodynamic
mechanics, too
o It is forced to transcend the boundaries as of the whole as
of the present
 The Planck constant
and the transition from the past to the present
(4) Thus, the Planck constant describes quantitatively the
transformation of the past (information) into the present
(action) as equivalency
o That equivalency means that information and action are two
different quantities and thus two different qualities, which
can be considered as a single quality right by means of that
equivalence
Thus, quantum mechanics manages to include both
reversibility and irreversibility into time in a consistent and
mathematically rigorous way
 The qualities of information and action
(5) Nevertheless, information and action are two different
physical quantities and thus two different qualities
corresponding to the different qualities of the past and the
present
o The nature of that fundamental difference between them
can be represented by the concept of choice, even in a
mathematical sense as in the axiom of choice in set theory
Action is always a choice in the present
o The result of that action equivalent to a choice is always
stored in the past as information
 Time shared
by both human beings and nature
(6) The transformation from the past into the present is
fundamentally the same in human beings and nature
therefore
o This generates a series of misinterpretations of quantum
mechanics as if subjective (ostensibly) vs. the rest science
being as if objective
We meet an omnipresent philosophical principle about the
course of time and shared by both (e.g.) electrons and
human beings making the formers to possess free will in
quantum mechanics
 The past by mathematics
(7) The past can be always represented as a single series well-
ordered in the rigorous mathematical meaning
o That well-ordering can be visualized by the principle of
causality:
The intervals between the events of that series depend on the
space position according to special and general relativity, but
not the well-ordering itself:
o Causality is invariant as in classical mechanics as in special and
general relativity as in quantum mechanics
Causality is underlain by the axiom of choice for it is equivalent
to the principle of well-ordering meaning physically right
causality
 Space and the present
(8) Space exists only in the present being the process of
ordering of a set of well-orderings different for any point of
space into a single well-ordered series of the past
o The single well-ordering of the past is identical for any space
point because of the principle of causality
However, arbitrarily many different well-orderings co-exist
simultaneously in the present
o The actions in the present being choices order all of them
into the single series of the past
Space is the room where that ordering is realized
Conclusions
 Time is both reversible and irreversible
oThe consistency of those reversibility and irreversibility
is the key for time to be understood
Quantum mechanics being a thermodynamic and mechanic
theory is forced to reveal the solution of how they can be
reconciled
oThat solution can be represented by the concept of quantum
information generalizing that of information nowadays
The core of that solution is the equivalence of the quantities
of information and action by means of the fundamental
Planck constant
 Labai ai u js malon dmes!

Laukiu js klausim ir komentar!

Thank you very much for your kind attention!

I am waiting for your questions and comments!